


a whole that's more than the sum of our parts

by GalaxyOwl



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, set vaguely during the finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 05:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17523179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyOwl/pseuds/GalaxyOwl
Summary: Sometimes Signet isn't sure where she ends and Belgard begins, and she's more or less come to terms with that.





	a whole that's more than the sum of our parts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fkchalice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fkchalice/gifts).



Signet rests a hand on the wall of Belgard’s cockpit. “How are you doing?”

“I am well,” Belgard says, “if you are.”

A smile tugs at the edge of Signet’s lip. “I’m well enough, I guess.” It’s been she’s-not-sure-how-long since they arrived on Privign station, and that’s… Well, it’s a lot of things. She’d rather not think of all of them right now.

The sound of footsteps, and Signet looks over to see Massalia—no, _Silver_ , she reminds herself, they’re an excerpt now, with all that that entails—standing in the entrance.

“Hello,” Signet says.

“Signet,” Silver says, “I wanted to talk to you.”

Signet steps toward them. “What about?”

A moment’s hesitation. “I’m glad that you’re here,” they say.

Signet blinks. “As am I.”

“Are you?”

Signet studies Silver’s guarded expression for a moment. She hasn’t really spoken with them since arriving, not at any length. “My feelings are not uncomplicated,” she says, finally, “but yes, I think I am.” Saying it aloud, it feels truer. She is glad to be here. She is glad she made this choice.

 _We_ , says a voice in the back of her head, and she amends the thought. _They_ made this choice, her and Belgard, together. She isn’t alone anymore. (She knows what that separation felt like, to go from being a _we_ back to an _I_ , and it’s hard, sometimes, to move on from that and spring back again.)

“Mhm,” Silver says. They cross their arms, but say nothing more.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Signet says.

“I guess I just wanted to see the five-star excerpt in action.”

“I am not really sure I’d call this action,” Signet says, slowly. “I was about to go have lunch. You can join me, if you want.”

Silver cracks a smile. That’s something, at least.

Signet sighs. “You’re nervous, right?”

Silver stiffens. The lights of Belgard’s control panel flicker between colors, making their scales glitter.

“You’re scared,” Signet says. “Because this thing that you spent so long working for is finally here, and you don’t know what to do about it, not really.” She stops, realizing what she’s saying. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to imply that you’re incompetent, just that… Just that it’s easy to feel that way. To wonder what the point even was, really, to put in all that time and effort, for something as simple as a reality.”

“Don’t act like you’ve had the same experiences as me when you haven’t,” Silver says. “But—“ They sigh. “You’re close, I suppose. Where it counts.”

Signet smiles. “What’re they like,” she says, “Barricade? As a divine?” She’d met the axiom Barricade, inasmuch as _met_ was a word that even applied. But from what little she’s heard—of Barricade, of the others like them—there is, understandably, a difference between axiom and divine.

“They’re…” Silver trails off. “They’re not Melodica,” they say, and then shake their head. “That makes it sound like I wish they were. That’s not what I’m trying to say.”

“I understand,” Signet says.

Silver takes a breath. “I don’t know,” they say, after a moment. “I could tell you what my first interactions with them were like, I could walk you through the intricacies of their controls, but I don’t… _know_ them. They’re… I suppose that’s how divines are, though, aren’t they? They’re unknowable.”

Signet’s first thought is that that’s so far from the truth as to be itself incomprehensible.

She could never think of Belgard as unknowable. Or maybe _never_ is too strong, maybe as a little girl of so, so long ago Signet had looked up at the towering form of a divine for the first time and barely been able to make sense of it. But when Signet thinks of divines now, this is not what comes to mind. What she thinks of instead is safety, is home, is the comfort of coming back to something—to some _one_ —after a long day amongst the unknown.

But Silver is looking at her, waiting for an answer. Silver, who has wanted so long to have this thing that Signet takes for granted as safe and known.

“I’m sorry,” Signet says. “Give them time.” She steps toward the exit. “I did mean it when I said you should join me for lunch.”

Silver laughs. “Fine,” they say. “Why not?”

As they walk the strange hallways of Privign Station, she thinks about Silver’s question that they didn’t ask as a question. She tries to think back to the old feelings of her early days in the hopes that there’s anything useful she can share. But that was lifetimes ago. Signet is tired. She doesn’t remember. Or she doesn’t want to; trying to hold that many years in her head at once just sounds… Exhausting.

Belgard remembers, of course, as far as Signet’s aware. Belgard is so much larger and older than even her, and it’s easy to forget that sometimes. She remembers with perfect clarity the day she and Signet first met, and the day they first became divine and excerpt, and the day, whenever it was, that they first became _partners_ , a single unit tied together tighter than any iconoclast could break apart.

Belgard had a lot of excerpts before her, of course. She is very old, and human bodies (synthetic bodies, any bodies) are very fragile. It is her job to understand this fact—it is her job to patch things up when they break, but not everything can be repaired indefinitely. That’s fine. The fact remains that Signet isn’t somehow special, or different. To say otherwise would be a lie, would be to say that none of the others counted, that she didn’t love each of them with every ounce of emotion in her pulsing electric heart.

Or, Signet _is_ special, and different, but so is everyone.

Belgard does not know if this is true of divines, as well. One would assume. One would assume, given that each is intended to have one concept that it is true to above all else, that this is the case, but making assumptions about the existential is rarely a safe bet. Belgard has been around long enough to learn that lesson the hard way, too.

Which is why she is more intrigued by Barricade than terrified. She could sense their presence—and Compulsion’s, too—the moment they arrived at the station, but they hadn’t reached out to her until now.

 _“_ You are Belgard,” Barricade says. Simple. A statement of fact.

 _No_ , says a voice in the furthest corner of her mind, _no,_ we _are—_ but names are complicated, careful things, and she does not finish the thought. Belgard will do for now. “Yes,” she says. “You are Barricade.”

“What is it to be Belgard?” Barricade says.

Belgard sends them a text file, a single line, one wired deep into her internal memories; the definition of a word long since fallen out of use.

Barricade does not respond immediately. “I’m not sure that’s a real answer,” they say.

“No,” she agrees. “But the real answer is not as easy to communicate.”

Barricade is fascinating and strange, all newly-made and ex-axiom. Belgard pays attention to every word, every wisp of thought and packet of data that comes her way from them. They are _different_. They are a new generation of divine, borne of a thing that was neither human nor human-touched. Yet that has not stopped them from being… There isn’t a word for it, this quality that they are. _Human-like_ isn’t the thing. To have a personality, to understand what it means to laugh even if you have no vocal chords or diaphragm, that is not the domain of humans alone, and it has not been for a long, long time. But it is something, certainly, some indefinable thing that an axiom is not.

“Are you glad?” Belgard can no longer hold the question back. “To be divine, now?”

Barricade does not respond immediately. When they do, they say, “Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“My feelings are not uncomplicated,” they say. “I am glad. I do not know if the person—if what I was before would have been glad that I am anything at all.”

Belgard was once new. Long before Signet, she was shiny and new and _different_ from all that had come before. A divine built by divines, born with a history at her back. At the time, it was revolutionary. It was strange. It was obscene.

In recent years, she has heard Signet explain what it means to be third-generation. Heard her have to parse out for her people what this group she belongs to is. In recent years, it is hardly revolutionary.

Belgard and Signet are the last of their kind. They have that in common.

“I’m not sure that’s the important part,” Signet says.

“True enough,” Belgard responds.“Still, it’s fascinating to think of the things that keep us together.”

Signet half-smiles. “I suppose,” she says. “Maybe being the last is a part of it. I was reminded of you at every turn, even when you were offline, which I suppose is kind of that. But I’d like to think this was where we’d wind up anyways.” She pauses, her expression shifting. “Well, maybe not here specifically. But together.”

Signet stands, and hovers for a moment, ready to head from Belgard’s cockpit to—somewhere else. But she doesn’t have any thought as to where, so all she does is hover.

“I was talking to Silver, earlier,” Signet says, the name still unfamiliar on her tongue.

“How are they?”

Signet doesn’t really mean for it to be, but the response that comes out of her mouth is, “Young.”

The thing is, Signet is very old, and human bodies (Apostolosian bodies, any bodies) are very fragile. It’s terrifying, sometimes, to remember that. The only reason she’s still alive is because she’s… This. Or it should be terrifying, anyway.

“Are they, now?”

Signet laughs. “I’m not sure.” A pause. “Sometimes I still wonder if we made the right decision, to come here. To back the Waking Cadent. Given that…” She trails off. Given what? Every single thing that’s happened in the last absurd couple of years?

“I think probably it is too late to wonder.”

“You’re right,” Signet says. She almost always is.

When Signet was with the Beloved, she and Belgard were separated. There was the quiet promise of her presence, still, when Signet returned to her, but they were not what they had once been. Belgard was only barely holding on. The discussion of why that was and whose _fault_ it was was a complicated one that Signet had long since tired of, but it happened. Every second Signet had to continue moving forward without Belgard was a tragedy, if she let herself think of it that way.

So when Signet was with the Notion, she had been hesitant about accepting a job that would so often take her halfway across the system, where she couldn’t always be near Belgard. But it turned out that she still heard her, at a distance. Still heard the news of where she was, and still _felt_ her, with the same indescribable sense of rightness that allowed herself to call someone to her with a name, the same power that allowed her to return to Belgard always, always, always. Belgard, who was her partner and sanctuary both.

That was a connection, it turned out, that paid little mind to something as trivial as physical distance. (Even if it was nice to be close, nice to have the concrete feeling of Belgard’s controls under her fingertips, the glitter of her displays all around.)

The Exuvia served as another reminder of her presence, in both cases. Not quite a part of Belgard, not quite separate, full of its own digital magic. Signet thinks about it, sometimes, the things that it showed her—each pair of divine and excerpt, in their truest form, not two beings but one; a single beating heart, a single metal body.

There are times when Signet feels the unignorable physicality of her and Belgard’s distinct forms and doesn’t see how that could ever be true. There are other times when she wakes from a dream with memories of flying, of conversation, of insectoid wings that are a _part_ of her as much as her fingers ever were. (Maybe even more so; human bodies, after all, are so very, very fragile.)

“Signet?” Belgard says.

“Yes?” Signet hadn’t said anything aloud.

“I know what you mean.”


End file.
